The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Gladys: “I Don’t Say Goodbye”

When she first moved back to Los Angeles from New York, Marilyn was excited to rebuild the life she once lived in the sunnier, more tranquil locale. Yet there were elements to her life that had drastically changed since she last resided in California. Certainly, the difficult times she endured in recent weeks had made her even more famous than ever before—but for the wrong reasons. The public had already been made aware of her admittance to the mental hospital in New York, and now, as a result of her being fired from the movie, there was growing interest in her emotional state. Worse, her daily trips to see Dr. Ralph Greenson were now being noticed by some members of the press and even fans who had begun following her every move.

Her time with Dr. Greenson—controversial as it was, even back then—had begun with a certain amount of frustration. While in New York, and under the care of numerous physicians there, Marilyn had come to believe that a certain pharmaceutical had been helpful in stabilizing her: Thorazine. It had begun to represent hope to her that she might be able to regain control of her often chaotic thought processes. Yet when Dr. Greenson heard Marilyn’s request for Thorazine, for some reason, he refused. Greenson had quickly become the one doctor Marilyn would trust and speak with openly, and he served that purpose well. Yet he knew all too well that Marilyn would at times have her own agenda when it came to her chemical treatment. It may have simply been that she was asking for more than he would have recommended, or that he didn’t want her to take it at all—but it was clear to her that she would need to find this wonder drug elsewhere, especially when her Los Angeles physician, Dr. Hyman Engelberg, also refused to prescribe it to her. Therefore, Marilyn continued her doctor-shopping ways with medics she had seen previously, most of whom had been starstruck by her and had given her whatever prescription drugs she requested.

“She was waiting in the lobby,” recalls one of the doctors to whom she had paid a visit during the summer of 1962. “I guess she had her head down in a magazine as the last client of the day left, and then she just walked right into the office. She was a knockout—lots of teased-out blonde hair… red lipstick. I remember she was wearing a cream-colored coat that looked like satin to me. She had on a white dress and I specifically remember that she was wearing white stilettos. I mean, she was dressed to kill in all-white. Very impressive… very movie star.”

Though Marilyn would address this doctor by the name of his previous employer—making it clear that she had so many doctors she didn’t even remember what they looked like!—it would quickly become apparent that he was a total stranger to her. Indeed, the man who had previously treated Marilyn had died and the one who now stood before her was his protégé and successor, the much younger Dr. Schwartz. ^*

“I knew her immediately, of course,” says the doctor, “and I even knew that she had seen [the deceased doctor] for a time. I had only been an intern for a short time before he died. There was no one to continue his practice, so his wife asked me to stay on and at least help some patients through the transition.

“She wanted Thorazine,” explains Dr. Schwartz. “I was wary of taking her on as a patient. Most doctors were afraid of treating a famous patient who had been suspected of attempting suicide. No one wants to be mentioned in a patient’s obituary as their last doctor.”

Though Marilyn persisted in trying to convince the young doctor that her experience with Thorazine had been a positive one, he was still reluctant. “When you’re fresh out of med school you’re under real scrutiny,” he explains, “overprescribing could get you into all kinds of trouble. Not with the authorities so much, but it can leave a doctor with a bunch of drug-dependent patients. Some doctors would like that, because it kept people coming back—but I didn’t [like it].”

Marilyn spent some time detailing her need for confidentiality —which made it easier for this young doctor to help her. While he refuses to detail what financial arrangements the two made, he doesn’t deny that he was compensated for the services he would provide. “There were a bunch of old prescription pads [from the deceased doctor],” Schwartz explains, “and since she wanted them [the prescriptions] written to a pseudonym anyway… I just did it. I wasn’t just doing it for the money, though. She actually seemed to be making sense to me. She convinced me it was in her best interest.”

The young doctor was rightfully anxious about his dealings with Marilyn Monroe, and so when he received a phone call from her a few weeks later, he was leery of further involvement. Despite his concern, though, she seemed to be doing well. “She said she felt better than she had in ages, and asked how much I charged for a house call,” explains Schwartz. “I told her I wouldn’t visit her at home but she said that she didn’t want me to. She wanted me to go with her to see her mother.”

Marilyn’s mother, Gladys, was at this time still being cared for at Rock Haven Sanitarium in La Crescenta, about a thirty-minute drive from Marilyn’s home and Schwartz’s office. Marilyn wanted the doctor to meet her there to try to convince Gladys, and also her doctors, that Thorazine could be an effective treatment for her. Again, after an undisclosed financial arrangement, Schwartz agreed to meet her at Rock Haven.

“When I got to Rock Haven, the front desk was empty, which is unusual in such a place,” Schwartz recalls, “then I turned and looked down a hallway and all of the staff seemed to be congregated in one area. I knew she—Marilyn—was already there.”

As odd as it may seem, Marilyn was actually early for the appointment. Schwartz found her—cloaked by a black-and-white scarf and wearing black-checkered pants—sitting across from an administrator and two doctors on staff. She seemed upbeat and hopeful—at least at first. (Note: These well could have been the “famous” black-and-white-checkered JAX pants worn by Marilyn in countless photos. She owned them for at least twenty years—even in photo sessions as Norma Jeane—and wore them very often.)

“Guess what? She’s already taking it,” Marilyn told Schwartz as he approached. “Thorazine,” Marilyn added with a big smile. “Mother has been on it for a while.”

“She’s being given it, anyway,” clarified one of the physicians present.

“What does that mean?” asked Marilyn.

The doctor then explained something that Marilyn already knew, that Gladys was a very stubborn woman. It seemed that the staff had often caught her attempting to avoid taking her medication. Marilyn said that she didn’t understand how that was possible. She thought a nurse would have stood in front of Gladys and waited while she took her pills. It turned out that a member of the staff would witness her pop the pills into her mouth, and would even wait while she drank a cup of water. Gladys would even be told to open her mouth to show that it was empty. However, she seemed to have mastered the ability to quickly tuck her pills between her teeth and inner cheek. That was at least what the staff assumed, since she seemed relatively unaffected by any of the drugs she was supposed to be taking. “She can’t do that,” Marilyn said, “you just can’t let her.” The doctor told her that it happened all the time. When he questioned Gladys about it, he said, she told him that the one or two times she actually took the medication, it stopped the voices in her head, “and then she missed them.” Therefore, she wouldn’t take the medication, and, he concluded, “if someone doesn’t want help, they won’t get any.”

That statement angered Marilyn. “She isn’t well enough to know she wants help,” she said. “Why don’t you give her injections of it? She can’t spit those out.”

The doctors seemed to find that proposal absurd. Marilyn was told that the staff did not administer drugs intravenously at that facility. If a patient needed that kind of care, she was told, then she needed to be somewhere else. “Then she will be,” Marilyn threatened. “Just tell me where to take her.”

It was then that one of the other doctors told Marilyn that Gladys had indeed been moved to other facilities numerous times, after episodes of extreme violence or threats of suicide. However, once her mother showed improvement, after having been given intravenous medication for a few days, she would always be released back to Rock Haven. He said he was surprised that Marilyn didn’t know about this. Perhaps he was referring to Gladys’s recent suicide attempt. “Not as surprised as I am,” Marilyn said, now very upset.

“You wouldn’t want her spending the rest of her life in a hospital, would you?” he asked.

“What do you call this?” Marilyn shot back.

“To your mother,” he answered, “it’s home.”

Marilyn didn’t know how to respond to that.

According to Dr. Schwartz’s memory, Marilyn was most unhappy with the staff’s blasé attitude about Gladys’s avoidance of treatment. Also, it’s likely their description of a couple of her stays in two other facilities reminded Marilyn of her own experience at Payne Whitney. The last thing she wanted to do was make Gladys’s life more difficult. Therefore she decided that she would not remove her mother from Rock Haven but would instead at least make an attempt at personally convincing her to take her medication.

Marilyn and Dr. Schwartz were then led out to the grounds by a nurse. He remembers the facility as being surprisingly bucolic, with sprawling, well-manicured lawns and numerous oak-tree-shaded areas in which patients could relax and roam. They found Gladys sitting at a picnic table, wearing a fur stole around her neck. She was a small-boned, frail woman now, with silver hair pulled back from her face and tied in a small knot with what appeared to be a simple rubber band. The doctor recalls thinking that she looked very much like what he might imagine Marilyn to look at age sixty-two. Moreover, he would also recall Marilyn later confessing that when she laid eyes on her mother she experienced a strong and unexpected feeling of bittersweet nostalgia sweeping through her. A large purse sat in front of Gladys on the table. It appeared as if she was searching inside it for something. Marilyn approached carefully. “Mother?”

“I’m here,” Gladys said rather loudly, as if a nurse was taking attendance.

Marilyn sat across from her mother. “Mother, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine,” she said. “This is Dr. Schwartz.”

Dr. Schwartz distinctly remembers Gladys pulling her purse closer to her for a moment.

“You’re new,” Gladys said, eyeing the visitor suspiciously. Then, turning to her daughter, she said, “I don’t know him.”

Marilyn then explained to her mother that she and the doctor had come to tell her something very important. She looked to the doctor and said to him, “She won’t listen to me, so you tell her.”

There was an awkward moment as Marilyn waited for the doctor to tell Gladys why she should take her medication. “It was a little bizarre,” he recalled, years later. “I wasn’t a psychiatrist, I wasn’t even her doctor, but [Marilyn] seemed desperate, so I did my best.”

The doctor then spoke to Gladys about the importance of taking her pills, but it was mostly for Marilyn’s benefit. As he spoke, Gladys continued rummaging through her purse. When he was finished, Gladys looked up at him and asked him if he were a doctor. He nodded. “Well, I’ll say a prayer for you and you can say one for me,” she said pointedly. “That’s more powerful than anything. Norma Jeane knows that.”

“No. Mother, no,” Marilyn insisted. She then explained that perhaps they’d all been wrong about Christian Science since neither of them had thus far been healed by the religion. She said that she now believed they needed more than just faith—they also needed medication. Then she briefly explained that she too had lately endured some very difficult times—she was probably referring to her stay at Payne Whitney—and that she now truly believed that both of them would benefit from Thorazine.

Gladys listened intently until Marilyn stopped talking. Then Gladys looked at Schwartz. “I don’t know what you’ve been filling this child’s head with,” she said, according to his memory of the conversation, “but Norma Jeane knows that the path to heaven is through prayer and devotion.”

“But maybe these drugs are an answer to your prayers,” Marilyn said. “Our prayers.” She continued pleading with her mother so vehemently, so passionately in fact, that she soon began to cry. “Can’t you listen to me, just this once?” she said through her tears. She said that “after all of these years” she now finally realized how truly torturous Gladys’s life had been and that she wanted to help her. “Please, I never ask you to do anything,” she continued, “but I’m begging you now.”

Gladys watched her daughter with a distant gaze. Finally, she asked Marilyn exactly what it was she wanted her to do. Marilyn said that all she wanted was for Gladys to take Thorazine for at least a week, or maybe even a month, if possible. “I know you’ll feel better,” Marilyn said.

“And then what?” Gladys asked.

“Then you can leave here,” Marilyn answered, “and get your life back.”

Gladys leaned in to her daughter. “And what life is that, dear?” she asked. “This place is all I’ve known for years.”

“I just want you to get better,” Marilyn said.

“You want me to get better for you,” Gladys responded, “and I thank you for that.” Then, staring intensely into her daughter’s eyes, she added, “but, Norma Jeane, I want you to get better for you.” Mother and daughter just looked at each other for another long moment. Then Gladys suddenly changed the subject. She turned to the doctor and, touching the fur that was wrapped around her neck, told him that Norma Jeane had given it to her. When he said he thought it was beautiful, she looked pleased. She said that the hospital staff rarely let her have it. However, when the weather got cold, she’d ask for it, and usually the staff would give it to her. She suggested that he touch it. The doctor cautiously reached out and began to stroke the pelt, but when he did, Gladys winced and pulled back forcefully. “You have an evil touch,” she said, her face suddenly darkening. All of this was just too much for Marilyn. With that, her tears began to flow again, unchecked. “You’ve upset Norma Jeane,” Gladys told the doctor. “She can be very sensitive.”

Just then, according to the doctor’s memory of these events, an elderly woman walked up behind Gladys. Oddly, the woman reached toward Gladys’s hand and held it. Without saying a word, she just stood there.

“Who’s this?” Marilyn asked, forcing a smile.

“This is Ginger,” Gladys replied. “She’s my friend.”

“Hello, Ginger,” Marilyn said. “Would you like to join us?”

Gladys began to stand. “Ginger doesn’t like visitors,” she said, her voice now suddenly flat and devoid of expression. “We’ve got to go back inside.”

As Gladys began to pick up her purse, Marilyn said, “No. Wait a moment.” She reached into her own pocketbook and pulled out a small flask. Quickly, she slipped it inside her mother’s purse.

Gladys, after a pause, seemed to perk up again. She gave her daughter a childish grin. “You’re such a good girl, Norma Jeane,” she said finally. “A very good girl.” She smiled. Marilyn beamed back at her. Then Gladys turned and began to walk away.

Marilyn and the doctor watched as Gladys and Ginger made their way across the expansive lawn. Though they didn’t know it, it would be the last time mother and daughter would ever lay eyes on one another. “I don’t say goodbye,” Gladys announced loudly, her back still to her daughter.

“She never has,” Marilyn said quietly. “Maybe that’s why I have to say it so often.”